


i hope you're happy

by themoonandmargot



Category: Smosh
Genre: Christmas, Japan, M/M, Mutual Pining, Smoshblr Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21982642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoonandmargot/pseuds/themoonandmargot
Summary: The holidays are about spending time with loved ones, but best friends Shayne and Damien always seem to be running away from each other. Unluckily for them, absence only makes the heart grow fonder.
Relationships: Damien Haas/Shayne Topp
Comments: 14
Kudos: 112





	i hope you're happy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weightedlive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weightedlive/gifts).



> I wrote this for Leo aka @damimenhaas on Tumblr for Smoshblr Secret Santa 2019 and he was gracious enough to let me publish it! Thank you all to those who have already read and reblogged the fic from my Tumblr (@shaymiens); to everyone else, I hope you enjoy reading :>

In November, Damien stands at the head of the office meeting table and makes an announcement.

“I’m flying to Japan next week,” he says. “I don’t know when I’m coming back. But I’ll be there for at least a month.”

The office stirs, save for Shayne. They’re shocked at first, second-hand excited. Then the confusion settles in and they explode with a flurry of questions that Shayne can answer himself. _You’re going by yourself?_ He’ll be with Kevin and Lacy. _Shayne’s not going?_ Shayne’s not. _What do you mean you don’t know when you’re coming back?_ He just doesn’t. _So are Kevin and Lacy coming back to L.A. without you?_ Yep. _Why are you leaving anyway?_

The extent of Shayne’s knowledge ends there, and so do Damien's answers. He stutters a bit, then after some time: “I just wanted to get away. And Japan’s my favorite place in the world…” His voice is soft—unsure of itself, of the believability of his reasons. His coworkers buy it, despite the tingle of “something off” underneath their skin.

Shayne doesn’t play along. _“Are_ you coming back?” he asks, above the noise. It’s not supposed to sound mean, not when he actually says it. But the power behind his voice unnerves the group and silences them.

Damien meets his eyes for the first time since he’s walked in the room. And Shayne thinks he’s looking in the eyes of someone who’s already standing in a foreign land, thousands of miles away.

Damien blinks. “Yeah,” he says, the sound of it catching in his throat. He smiles. Shayne doesn’t look long enough to smile back.

* * *

In August, Shayne sits sweat-drenched beside his best friend on the couch and thinks he could stay there forever.

They aren’t really doing anything, just scrolling holes through their phones and chatting nonsense between the memes; just existing in the same place at the same time. But there aren’t many people on this earth with whom Shayne could sit for hours on end without feeling the pressure to fill the silence, so he’s actually rather happy to be in Damien’s company. Even though they’re _melting._

The dry L.A. heat pervades everything around and about them—the air heaving past Damien’s vents, their conversations. They’ve already complained to each other about the summer weather four times today, and Damien has to stop himself from adding an extra tally to the mental count. Instead, he cranes his neck to Shayne (then cranes his mind to four months down the line, when the temperatures outside are lower and quiet days like these are much harder to find).

“Let’s do something for Christmas this year.”

Shayne turns slowly, face scrunched in confusion. “Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“Like our own Christmas party?”

“Like our own Christmas _dinner.”_

Lowering his phone to his stomach, Shayne huffs, “But no one would show up except us.” He’s surprised to see Damien’s eyes widen in excitement— _exactly,_ he reads among the amber flecks—and the confusion transfers from one talking point to the next. “You’re saying you’d rather spend Christmas with me than with family?” Shayne asks, quiet.

“You _are_ family.”

Shayne presses his lips together. “Huh… good point.” They shift their positions on the couch, unsticking their limbs from the cushions, from each other.

“I mean, unless you would rather be with your real family for the holidays.” Damien scrunches his nose at the phrasing of it all and laughs. “Your dumdum real family. Your not-as-cool family.”

Shayne closes his eyes and shakes his head, silently laughing. “I’m joking,” Damien adds, and that makes Shayne laugh harder.

“No, I get it,” Shayne says as the chuckles die down. “And… I mean, yeah, going home for the holidays is always nice. But it’s the same thing every year, y’know? Same traditions, same memories. And I guess it’s nice to have some consistency in my life.” A smile curls around his lips. “But why not make some new memories with my super cool, not-dumdum family?”

Damien's mouth spreads into a grin, not unlike the one his friend has. They've been sweating this entire time, but now a different warmth radiates between them. Damien's not sure if it has anything to do with the weather; something about being here, together, alone. And it’s on this couch, the one they’ve known for years, that Damien senses an internal shift—something different, and something very, very not okay.

“God, the holidays are so far away, though,” he blurts, backtracking a bit. Shayne doesn’t hear the panic in his voice.

“Yeah. We’ve got a long way to go.” Shayne grins. “Guess we’ll just sit here for four more months.”

“I guess so.”

They both know it’s a joke, but the thought crosses Shayne’s mind for the second time that day: he could stay here forever.

Damien thinks he’d be better off running away.

* * *

In October, Shayne is tipsy and only slightly concerned that his best friend is flirting with him.

Damien’s always been a touch too friendly—not for Shayne, though, he doesn’t mind. But he’s still unnerved by the way Damien had trotted over, rosy-cheeked and loose in the shoulders, before switching on the charm and making Shayne read entirely too much into everything. “This s’posed to be unbuttoned?” Damien asks mid-conversation, pressing a single finger to his friend’s hip.

Shayne drops his attention to the bottom half of his costume. He eyes the line of buttons that secure his green utility overalls, and sure enough, the top button sits free atop his pelvis, the way he’d left it before leaving his apartment earlier tonight. Shayne raises a brow. “Yeah…?” he replies, except Damien’s already reaching to fasten the button, then again on his other side.

“There you go, baby boy.” Damien finishes off the procedure with a friendly pat of Shayne’s hips, and Shayne lets him, laughing a bit.

“How’d you even notice that…?”

Damien shakes his head, refusing to answer (though more likely, just not caring to). Then before the conversation can careen into whichever direction, he counters Shayne’s question with one of his own. “Hey, what happened in July?” he asks.

Shayne pauses. “What?”

The volume of the room has nothing to do with Shayne’s lack of understanding, yet still Damien looms closer, then speaks again. “Why’d you go on that trip in July?”

Shayne furrows his brows and laughs, perplexed by the question. But the longer he looks up at Damien’s face, the more he’s convinced that Damien actually wants an answer, and he has to think back to three months ago, back to his one-man camping trip in the middle of the Coloradan forest.

It was a beautiful trip. Mount Bierstadt was gorgeous. And yet...

Shayne looks back up at Damien’s face, then down towards his own shoes, at the buttons above his pockets. He swallows.

“Time for myself,” Shayne answers. “Time to think.”

Damien steps closer, ever closer. “Think about what?”

Shayne steps back, stumbling a bit. He smells the alcohol in Damien’s breath before he sees it in his cup—a rarity, especially for something as benign as a Halloween party. For a small moment, the good friend in Shayne is concerned. The good friend in him wants to preserve whatever inhibitions Damien is trying to tear down, because he knows this a conversation they wouldn’t be having if Damien didn’t have some greater reason for it, but he also knows Damien wouldn’t have acted on anything had he stayed sober tonight. Shayne knows this, yet the bad friend in him sees this as a sign.

The bad friend in him wants to take a gamble.

“Us,” he breathes, eyes flickering between the lapel of Damien’s shirt and the drape of silk across Damien’s forearms. “I needed to think about us.”

And like that, the truth is finally there, out in the open, swirling between them and everyone else in the room. He half-expects Damien to snap out of his stupor and confront him, or if not Damien, then an eavesdropper with a nose up their business.

So it takes Shayne a second, pulling his eyes up to meet his friend’s. Shayne might as well be dangling off a cliff, the way all this anticipation is making his stomach feel. But then Damien scrunches up his face and points his ear in Shayne’s direction. _“What?”_

Shayne’s heart nearly gives out. With a shake of his head and a long-held breath, he places a hand on Damien’s back and guides him to the beverage table. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. Let’s just get you some water.” Damien nods, not quite understanding but still hearing, still listening like he had been when Shayne told him about _us._

For the rest of the night, he watches Shayne fidget with the buttons on his costume, and sips his water in silence.

* * *

In December, Shayne counts the weeks since Damien left for Japan, and he has to pretend he’s okay with it.

Except, alright, he _is_ okay with it, at least partly; it’s not like this is the first time the two of them have spent a prolonged amount of time away from each other. _(And god, “away from each other”? Were we ever really together to begin with?)_ No, this isn’t entirely new—just different, and maybe Shayne’s way of coping with the change is deception, trickery, and a whole lot of lying.

He spends the quiet moments on the clock wondering if it was always this quiet, or if the office felt quite this bleak before his best friend joined the channel, then brushes everything to the back of his mind once the cameras start rolling. When his friends invite him out, he always says he has duties to tend to or appointments to take care of, when in actuality, he couldn’t have more free time on his hands. And the calls he’s received from family members this week alone—well, he’s definitely happy to know he’s welcome at this year’s holiday dinner table, but the number of times he’s had to decline and say he’s already planning something for Christmas when he’s not even sure about that himself… it’s gotten unbearable.

But maybe most unbearable are the small moments he and Damien do get to talk. They’re still natural, their conversations. The ease at which they tell each other about their days still remains. Shayne can’t complain about that, especially considering how tense the air was around them before Damien left. But still, that air between them—the wind under airplane wings and at the bay of faraway tides—sits strange in Shayne’s lungs. With every quick check of their Discord chat, he gets the weird, familiar sense of being in a long-distance relationship, except now that relationship is the friendship with his best friend, and the long-distance part is only supposedly temporary.

So at 4:45 in the morning on Christmas Eve, Shayne lays on his bed and decides he’s tired of lying and over-thinking and feeling generally weird around (away from) his best friend. Maybe the things he’s about to say will sound strange coming out of nowhere. But Shayne knows they’ll be true, and more so than ever, Shayne decides Damien deserves to know the truth. With a drowsy sense of determination, he brings his phone to his nose. The screen light cuts through the grey of his bedroom and his own fatigue.

_We miss you,_ he types, eyelids straining against each letter. Then he types something else, thumbs turned reckless. _I miss you._ He’d like to think that he hits send without thinking, but in reality these words are all he’s been thinking, all he’s imagined of saying.

Sleep threatens his senses. He pictures Damien, in a little hotel across the sea, with enough sleep for the both of them. Yet his phone buzzes twice against his head, on the pillow where he dropped it–

_I miss all of you, too._

_But I miss you the most._

Shayne’s eyes fly open and they keep open. They focus on the words before him, then on the vulnerable silence they let sit between them. He’s not sure if he likes the sensation of missing someone, of lying awake in bed for hours on end because of some sort of homebound homesickness. But Shayne thinks if he’s going to waste his sleep on missing someone, they ought to miss him back. And that someone might as well be Damien.

Shayne breathes thick through his lips. It’s true, Damien misses him, and that assurance seems to calm the insomniac in him, even when the curtains drip yellow with sunlight. He pulls the sheets around him, bunching heavy along his waist. In his sleep-deprived mind he refashions the added weight into an arm, transforms his own body heat into another person’s.

He chooses not to think about whose arm sweeps underneath his chest, whose phantom body pulls him close. And almost instantly, he’s lulled to sleep.

* * *

On Christmas Day, Shayne wakes up knowing he is alone.

He drifts through his apartment, aware that today is different, that the world around him has misted over in a sugary holiday haze. Somehow the shift keeps his spirits up, even in isolation.

From the very beginning of his day, his routine is wrecked. No quick protein shake out the door and to the gym; Shayne worries what people would assume about his schedule if he had the time to visit the gym on a hectic, family-filled day like this. Plus, he wouldn’t want to step out of the house and miss any visitors—not that he’s getting his hopes up.

After an hour-long breakfast, though, he has to actively remind himself that the rest of the day and its rituals belong to him, not anyone else he might anticipate coming. _Yeah, I’m doing this for myself,_ he thinks when he preps more food than he can eat tonight, or when he puts together an outfit that’s far too nice for nobody else to see. In a way, the denial keeps his mind at bay. But denial implies there’s something to deny, and Shayne can’t stand how badly he wants to sit and be with someone he just can’t sit and be with.

That feeling makes the day run slow, even slower than most Christmases. Because instead of being held down by family members who are too old and tired to do anything of substance during the holidays, it’s his own damn brain that traps him. It’s yearning and dread, mixed and more potent than any eggnog concoction on Earth. It’s 5:30 in the evening when Shayne shovels a forkful of of turkey in his mouth and realizes that he’s mentally exhausted yet ever-energized and willing to sit there for the rest of the night, just so he might be able to see _him._

He closes his eyes, wondering what happened to not getting his hopes up. Then someone knocks at the door.

Shayne doesn’t believe his ears for a second. He thinks maybe a bird outside crashed into the window, or maybe a nearby neighbor bumped into the wall in a spell of drunkenness. But a beat passes, and the knock comes again, this time stronger. Shayne rises and strides to the front door, each step a shock of electricity to his soles. His hand lingers on the lock, scared of what it’ll reveal, but a deep breath and a gut-wrenching bout of longing pulls the door open for him.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting when he finds Damien standing at his doorstep. His best friend is a mess—nose red, eyes heavy, horribly underdressed for the weather. But there’s something picturesque about this moment, with the night settling in behind them, and the same wind that brought him away bringing him back again.

“Hi,” Damien says. He looks at Shayne like he’s looking at a ghost—in fear, in awe, in disbelief.

“You’re back,” Shayne gasps, just as stunned.

“Yeah, I… I said I would be.” Damien glances down. “You look nice.”

“Thanks,” Shayne breathes. Then he steps aside, scrambling to make enough room for Damien and his luggage. “Uh, how was Japan?”

To Shayne’s surprise, Damien doesn’t immediately gush about the scenery or the shops or the food. Instead, he pauses to think—eyes trained ahead of him—and presses his lips in a reserved smile. “It was wonderful. You know in Japan, they celebrate Christmas by eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

Shayne grins, softly, as his friend struggles to pull his bag past the doorway. Shayne almost thinks Damien smells different, new travels stitched into old clothes. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. People, like, place orders for fried chicken buckets, weeks in advance. It’s awesome.”

“I like how after everything you did during the past month and a half, the first thing you tell me about is eating KFC for Christmas.”

“Yeah, well. There’s lots to talk about. Figured I might as well get the easy stuff out of the way.”

Shayne should feel scared, but he just chuckles and leads Damien through his apartment, through the space that’s been missing Damien for all this time. Shayne wants to say that the balance is restored now that his best friend is back, but there’s a certain instability that comes with holidays, the hint of not-quite-normal that flickers in the plug-in lights and winter chill. No, Shayne finds nothing unfamiliar about standing with Damien in the middle of his kitchen, but somehow the context of Christmas turns everything on its head.

He doesn’t register any of the words Damien has about the aroma of his cooking. He doesn’t even hear Damien compliment his apartment, how he had decorated for the holidays. The candlelight glows bright and the small tree in the corner wraps them strong in balsam—but all Shayne knows and understands is the warmth he feels when he looks at Damien.

And Damien looks back. He watches the two lone plates on the table, pulls tight around him the coat Shayne had lent him for the night. Japan was a getaway and Los Angeles is a stomping ground, but Shayne is _home,_ the purest form of happiness and comfort that Damien could ever seek. He’s ashamed that it took him a month and a half to recognize that. He prays he’s not too late.

He doesn’t think he is, not when Shayne turns on some Christmas music and joins him at the table. But not even Christmas dinner can escape the real reason they’re here, the inevitable talk about everything between them.

“Damien,” Shayne breathes, “why _did_ you go to Japan?”

* * *

In September, Damien attends the wedding of one of his closest friends, and cries.

He cries when Allisyn walks down the aisle, beauty and elegance radiating. He cries when he studies her face and finds all the features that remind him of a fifteen-year-old version of her, finds all the ways it’s changed. He cries when she and Dylan exchange vows, when they talk about meeting years ago and just _knowing._ He cries so much it twists his stomach in half. And later that night, when she makes the rounds at the reception party, he gets the chance to cry some more, right in front of her.

“You’re all grown up now,” Damien sniffles.

Allisyn takes his face in her hands and grins. “I’ve been grown up for a while. I’m not an adult just because I get to wear a ring on my left hand now.”

Damien giggles, bowing his head. “I know, I know. It’s just… you’re the little sister I never had. And now you’re _married.”_

“It’s crazy, right? I can’t believe all these people came here to celebrate _my_ wedding. All my friends.” Allisyn drops her hands from Damien’s cheeks and pauses, staring into the sea of people on the dance floor. She meets Shayne’s eyes from across the room and he beams at her. And something clicks in her mind, the hint of a long-kept thought now pushed straight to the surface, through her lips and out in the open where it shouldn’t be.

“I thought out of everyone in So Random, you two would…”

She bites her tongue. Damien raises a brow, not quite sure where her words lead but somehow still knowing. “What?” he murmurs.

Shaking her head, she turns back to Damien. Her face lights up with the erasure of _not tonight_ , _maybe another night_ —a true actress at play. But she’s not acting when she says, “I’m so happy, Damien.” Her eyes shine in the low light of the venue. “I’ve never been happier.”

Damien’s face melts into a smile and they hug. With his arms wrapped around Allisyn’s small figure, Damien recognizes a certain warmth deep within his chest—the love for a friend. It’s a startlingly different feeling than the love he’s felt before, for a person he’d call a friend, too. He doesn’t focus on that, though, not when Allisyn stands on her toes and whispers something in his ear that changes his life just as much as tonight has changed hers.

_I hope you’re happy, too._

* * *

Sometime in March, Damien had stumbled upon an article about the World Happiness Report, a global annual survey on the general happiness of different countries around the world. Damien was surprised to read that Japan had not only received a mediocre score in happiness, but that the score was lower now than it had been in past years.

That fact confused him, scared him even. How can a place boast so much culture and beauty and life… while still filled with sad people? How can anyone be sad in a place like Japan?

The longer he thought about it, though, the more it made sense. People could’ve asked him the same thing, about being sad, and for it, the lack of a good excuse. _Why are you sad when you have this amazing job and these amazing friends and all these people who love you?_

Damien didn’t have an answer, not for a long time. Soon he realized that most everything great in his life was attributed to a single person: his best friend. Then in August, and all the months after, he realized the best things in life can sometimes hurt the most.

Damien flew to Japan because he thought the only way to rid his system of Shayne was to find beauty in a life without him. But in the quiet moments, Shayne was all he ever really thought about. Every landmark, every natural wonder, every bucket-list item and every bar… Damien couldn’t get his best friend out his head. He was just another sad person in Japan. And if he didn’t act quick, the misery would spread to the only person he’d travel across the world for—and on Christmas, too.

But here and now, how does he explain that to Shayne: why did he go to Japan?

He chews on the question for a moment. Then he says everything he has to say.

_For the same reason you didn’t go._

Shayne’s shoulders fall. _You didn’t want me to go._

Damien sighs. _I know._ Then he looks desperate at Shayne, telepathic through his eyelashes. _I know._

Suddenly they’re thrown back in time, frozen in November when neither of them knew if they’d ever see each other again, to October at a costume party when they hid feelings behind solo cups, to September when they attended a wedding and wondered if surrounding themselves in that much love was supposed to hurt, to August when they first thought they might be more than best friends, to July, to June, to January, to all the months and years—of history, of good times, of phantom pains in limbs never-quite-lost.

Now it’s December, Christmas Day. At the dinner table they sit silent, eating a meal originally made for one. And Shayne and Damien finally see they’re in love with each other.

* * *

He sets down the silverware, breaks through the barrier.

_Do you want to go for a walk?_

* * *

December in L.A. isn’t that cold, not really. But if not the pavement that’s icy, it’s the pedestrians—two best friends, strangers, guinea pigs of time and distance. The roads sit silent amidst a haunting absence of cars, and the two of them can only be grateful that the shuffle of their footsteps fills the void.

Shayne sniffles, then turns to Damien. “Hey, do you wanna know what I thought about doing the entire time you were gone?”

Grinning softly, Damien meets Shayne’s gaze. “Mm?”

“I considered visiting our old apartment so many times,” Shayne laughs. “I don’t know why, or like, how the idea even came about, but… I got curious. Just what it’s like, how it’s changed. Who lives there.”

Damien nods and continues. “Who lives there, how to trespass on their property. How to get a restraining order from the poor soul who now inhabits our old rooms. Yeah, sounds like a fantastic plan.”

Shayne laughs, stuffing his hands further down his jacket pockets. “I wasn’t actually gonna do it. I mean, I’d like to think that I give decisions like that quite a lot of thought.” Teasing, he eyes Damien. “Unlike you, Mr. Fly-Me-To-Japan.”

“Hey, okay, I had my reasons,” Damien giggles. Then the laughter falls out of the conversation from beneath them, as Damien goes quiet and stops in his tracks. Shayne halts with him. “Shayne,” Damien says, “I’m sorry. For leaving.”

Shayne glances at Damien, at the hazel eyes that seem to carry all the guilt in the world. He winces. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I do.” Damien’s voice lowers in the hush of the street. “If you felt anything like how I felt while I was away, then I do.”

“And what exactly did you feel?”

Damien’s mouth snaps shut, a somber sparkle in his eye. He stands uncomfortable, vulnerable in the chill of the street, and Shayne places a reassuring hand on Damien’s arm. “You don’t have to answer that,” he says. It’s only after he really listens to himself that Shayne realizes how low he’s talking, how careful.

Damien shakes his head. “Shayne…”

“Damien, it’s okay, we’re fine! I’m not mad at you. I just missed you a lot. And I’m glad you’re back.”

“I know, I believe you. I just…” Damien releases his lip from under his teeth and takes a deep breath. “I… I’m not dumb, right?”

“What? No.”

“Okay, but…” Damien’s eyes flash across the empty road, then to his feet, before settling on Shayne—that soft, blinking face, forever processing. “I’m not… misinterpreting things, am I?”

Shayne swallows, a wave of realization flooding his senses. Damien’s directness makes him nervous, but at this point, he’s past being afraid. _This_ is where they are now: searching for each other, reaching out. And Shayne thinks then, he’d like to kiss him.

Trembling, he smiles and shakes his head. “No,” he replies quietly. “You’re not. I promise.”

He thinks he’s always wanted to kiss him.

The small drop of his Damien’s shoulders is almost imperceptible, yet nevertheless Damien exhales, just barely. “Good,” he murmurs, a small smile on his lips. “That’s a relief to hear.” He blushes (Shayne could _die)_ and his eyes drop to the part of his sleeve that Shayne is still touching.

Then instead of kissing him, Damien brings his hand over Shayne’s, fingers brushing together. It takes a Christmas miracle for Damien to rack up the courage, but he takes Shayne’s hand and holds it in his own. Something swells within Shayne when he squeezes back, a sensation both new and natural. Shayne thinks he could stay here forever, at Damien’s side, and for once, Damien doesn’t feel like he has to run away. He’s free. He’s happy. They’re both happy.

“Merry Christmas, Damien.” Shayne tugs him along, leading him, pulling him closer. Grinning, Damien lets him.

“Merry Christmas, Shayne.”


End file.
